


forces of nature

by shatterthelight



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Parallels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5333549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterthelight/pseuds/shatterthelight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were both raised in the eye of a hurricane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	forces of nature

_There is a girl_ who dances outside when the stars are out, her arms outstretched to catch their light as they smile upon her.

Her hair, dark as the night, tumbles down her back. It tangles easily, for she insists on wearing it loose no matter what, believing freedom to trump the practicality of a braid. She sits in the lap of her mother, who tugs a brush through the knots and presses kisses upon her head. _I love you, my little one_ , her mother says, every single night.

Her father is devoted, never lacking in love; her sister is bright and curious and beautiful, the mirror image of their mother, except for the eyes. Those were given not to her sister, but to her. _You and your mother have the sky in your eyes_ , her father tells her once. _She must have given a piece of the heavens to you._

Storms terrify her; the sound of thunder sends tears down her cheeks. When lightning flashes outside her window, she crawls into the embrace of her mother, who rocks her and strokes her hair and calms the fear blooming in her chest.

She’s told that her touch has power, that there is something indescribable burning within her. Her mother promises that one day she will learn to harness it into the potential to change the world.

When she looks at her hands, though, hands are all she sees. Still she listens when she is commanded not to touch anyone’s throat, for she is too young to know control.

In the morning, she sings along with the birds and races her sister through the grass. Her legs are short, but they take her far; the little one struggles to keep up with her, so she slows, always, until her giggling baby sister tackles her and sends them both falling to the ground, where they laugh until their voices are hoarse.

She thinks little of destiny or prophecy – what matters to her is happiness, and oh, she is so, so happy.

She doesn’t know the meaning of the word temporary.

 

* * *

 

 **There is another girl** , one with hair the color of sunshine and an even brighter smile. Some call her quiet, others shy, even others meek, but all say she’s the gentlest soul to be found.

She has a sister of her own, this one older, who gives her piggybacks to the stream where they skip stones. Her stones never go far, but she cares little about this, for she always ends up abandoning the game after becoming entranced by the fish that circle in the water. Sometimes she catches them; always she throws them back.

When spiders scuttle through the house, she traps them under cups and takes them back outside, even when her sister begs her to squish them. She sees beauty in everything, from the bugs on the ceiling to the weeds that overtake the garden. She sees the beauty of _life_ , of the way nature is never quiet, of the way everything alive hums with its very existence.

The only thing she recoils from is people – she loves them, wants nothing more than to know the stories of everyone she meets, but when she comes face to face with them, every word she wants to say dies in her throat before they can ever manage to escape.

She hides under blankets, behind books, behind anything that will conceal her furious blush.

The words only come easily for her father, whose warmth melts away all of her inhibitions. Around him, she talks endlessly, knowing he will love her no matter what she says.

He lets her sit on his shoulders, and when she's up in the air, high enough to touch the clouds, she knows what courage must feel like, and she vows to be brave one day.

 

* * *

 

 _The girl is five years old_ when her mother withers away.

They think she’s too young to know what death means, but they’re wrong. She knows it means gone, that her mother is gone and will never come back, and she will never see her again.

She has no time to mourn, because when her mother dies, her father unleashes an anger like nothing she’s ever seen before. He storms through the house, turns over tables and wails about years that are lost to him forever.

When he looks at her, all the love she’d known before is gone, and like her mother, it will never come back.

Her little sister cries when her father yells; she runs to the bedroom and burrows herself under the sheets where nothing can hurt her as far as she knows. The girl sits at her side and runs her hand through her sister’s hair, whispers hushed consolations, tries her hardest to be the mother she needs so desperately.

The first time he makes her use her power, it surges with such force from her tiny body that she faints dead away. She wakes to a nightmare, to a man bending over her, the words _command me_  tumbling from his mouth. His eyes are empty and her throat closes up and she wants to run in the other direction until she falls off the earth. But her father is watching, so she dares not move a muscle.

It’s the first time, and it is most certainly not the last.

She realizes, one day, that she isn’t afraid of storms anymore. She can’t afford to be, not when she lives with a hurricane of a man brewing in the other room.

 

* * *

 

 **The other girl is nine** when the leather-clad women pry her, screaming in terror, from her despairing family. _I love you_ , her father yells. Even when she’s too far to see him anymore, she can still hear his voice, distant, broken. _I love you_. It’s the last thing she ever hears him say.

Where they take her is dark and cold and crawling with rats. She curls up in the corner and cries through every hour of every day. In a short matter of time, her knees are scraped and bloodied, and her eyes are permanently bloodshot from the unending stream of tears.

They press something they call an Agiel to her neck, and it’s the worst pain she’s ever felt, like fire burning through her veins and threatening to rupture her insides. They tell her all she has to do to stop it is to cooperate, but she can’t. She won’t.

One day they bring her her father, thrust him to his knees before her, tell her of how he sold her to them, sold her sister too, sold them like animal carcasses, and an unfamiliar ice of hatred and betrayal freezes her heart.

It’s his fault. The fire and the pain – his fault.

She grips the Agiel in her hand and drives it against her father’s throat until she is met with raw, red skin and the smell of charred flesh. His face contorts and his mouth hangs wide open as the light slowly, painfully, dies from his eyes, but never, not once, does he scream.

Neither does she.

 

* * *

 

 _She is a weary soul in a young girl's body_ by the time she and her sister are rescued from her father and hidden away from his hold.

 _We will protect you_ , they say, but the part of her heart that knows how to trust is locked within a prison of steel and ice to shield what little remains of it.

There are others like her, she discovers. They teach her to control it, the power roaring inside her, and as the years pass, she becomes a savior, a saint, an angel sent to bless the mortals with her touch.

Or rather, that’s what the people say. She thinks the white dress makes her look more like a ghost. And when she wraps her hand around throats and watches irises turn black, she doesn’t feel the slightest bit divine.

 

* * *

 

 **She is a tempest.** She is hail and lightning and hellfire.

The women break her, forge the pieces back together, stronger than before, and break her again. In time, she becomes accustomed to the touch of the Agiel. The pain never truly leaves, but now it’s a comforting sort of familiar, a sign that she’s still breathing and feeling and _surviving._

_They break her. Build her back together. Break her._

The bloodier her hands are stained, the more welcome she’s made to feel, and the easier the cycle becomes.

She blossoms into a young woman, all golden hair and curves and full lips and scars on every inch of her back. When she’s finally brought before her lord, a wide grin spreads across his face, and his first words to her are a whisper in her ear: _I think I'm going to like you._

There’s a strange sensation that she can feel now, can feel deep within her chest. It takes a very, very long time for her to identify it, to understand that it is not a presence, but rather, an absence.

Finally, she is fearless.

_Break her. Build her back together. Break her._

_And build her back together._

The breath of life cannot save the dead little girl inside of her.

 

* * *

 

_Find the Seeker._

The words ring in her ears, even now. It’s her destiny, they told her. Every time she finds herself wanting to give up or run away or break down, she reminds herself of that. 

When her body, worn with exhaustion, threatens to crumble under the weight of her mission, she keeps going.

When she watches the life die from her little sister's eyes, she keeps going.

After all, it may be the Seeker's duty to save the world, but her vow is to protect him. From monsters, and from magic, and from human beings.

So she breathes, and she stands, and she moves forward towards the future, and the Seeker, and the glimmer of hope that some of this suffering has been worth it, and most importantly, towards her fate.

She can do it. She has already weathered far more than anyone will ever know.

 

* * *

 

 _ **Once upon a time**_ , one woman learned to walk through storms, and another woman learned to become one.


End file.
